# AST-Compat
backward compatibility library for Python standard library `ast`.
## What is AST-Compat for?
- **backward compatibility for constructing ASTs**
For instance, `ast.arguments` is changed since Python 3.8, that another field `posonlyarg` is introduced,
hence you should construct an `ast.arguments` with an additional argument `posonlyarg=...` since Python 3.8
and it wouldn't work if your code is written before Python 3.8.
Through `ast_compat`, you don't have to worry about above question if a new argument is **optional or a list**.
**Note that you should use `ast_compat.XXX` instead of `ast.XXX` to construct ASTs.**
- Support **ast.Constant** before Python 3.6.
`ast.Constant` is convenient, and things like `ast.Num` are redundant according to this observation and improvement: https://bugs.python.org/issue32892
However, `ast.Constant` is not available in 3.5 or earlier versions, thus we backport `ast.Constant` in this library.
To access the content of `ast.Constant` in a compatible way, use `ast_compat.get_constant` instead of `.value`.
- Support dumping AST to string with **ast_compat.unparse**, which synchronizes the tooling code provided by CPython official repo.
## Usage
```python
import ast_compat as astc
from ast_compat import get_constant
assert get_constant(astc.Constant((1, 2))) == (1, 2)
empty_args = astc.arguments() # work for all of Python 3.5-3.11
```
## Implementation, and rebuild
The compatibility is following the specification of Python ASTs, i.e,
the ADSL file you can find at
`https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/<branch/tag>/Parser/Python.asdl`.
We parse the file, and generate verifications and default argument factories,
check `ast_compat/compat3k*_{ast|unparse}.py`. To explain, `ast_compat/compat3k5_*.py` is for
Python 3.5, and `ast_compat/compat3k9_*.py` is for Python 3.9.
The file of generator is `generate_ast_compat.py`, and the use of generator API is in this way:
```python
from generate_ast_compat import compat
compat((3, 5)) # generate ast_compat/compat3k5_ast.py and ast_compat/compat3k5_unparse.py
compat((3, 6))
compat((3, 7))
compat((3, 8))
prerelease_url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python/cpython/v3.9.0a3/parser/python.asdl"
compat((3, 9), prerelease_url)
```
The code generation needs Python 3.7+, though this library works for Python 3.5 and 3.5+.